Category: Oddities

I had a memory flood back to me like that I hadn’t thought of in a while:

When I was young, I really struggled with spelling. I mean, I still struggle with spelling, but I have those wonderful red squiggles to help me out now. Anyway, I remember sitting at a parent-teacher conference in fourth grade – I think – and there was conversation about how I was still not reading chapter books and I was still using “inventive spelling,” which was unacceptable at that level.

I guess.

This memory is always spurned by a slightly earlier memory, I think first or second grade. I was trying to write “The Indians are our friends.” and what I wrote was “The Indians are are friends.” I knew they were different words, but I didn’t understand the spelling difference.

Chronic bad speller. I legitimately thank God for whomever added the squiggly lines to Word, and also whomever added them to browsers.

That one popped into my head because I meant to type “our” and I typed “are.” I deleted, corrected, and then the memories flooded back.

There is always a third thing that pops into my head. There is a story from this guy talking about a girl on social media who is obviously a teenager with teenage theories and beliefs. He goes through how dumb she supposedly is – again, probably because she’s a teenager1 – and yet she always used the right version of there/their/they’re, as a righteous condemnation of anyone who gets it wrong because “she’s dumb, and even she can do it.”

I wonder how much brilliance is ignored because communication isn’t everyone’s forte. Sometimes saying something is more important than saying it properly. Sometimes the thoughts get ahead of the grammar, and the thoughts are much more important than the grammar, yet we condemn anything not written properly as stupid.

I’m as guilty as anyone. I’m a little bit racist in this regard, in fact. There is a pronunciation of “ask” that makes me immediately discount the speaker as less educated and less wise. Now, I recognize this about myself and I consciously snap myself out of it – I have casual racism within me, like anyone else, and I believe just acknowledging it and then putting it aside when it happens will make me, and anyone else, better at interacting with the world – but it’s a thing for me. And it almost made me discount the wisdom of someone in CPE, someone who brought a lens to my experience I was so very lucky to have because her presence was so very atypical to the CPE process.

We need to become better judges of the thoughts expressed to us and stop using our biases against certain types of communication in that judgement process. How often have you discounted something because it isn’t well written? How often have you discounted something because the speaker is angry, or upset, or emotionless? How often have you discounted someone because they lack education, or are highly educated? How often have you discounted someone because of their level of privilege, be it high or low?

Because I have. Probably every day.

There was a great article – and if I find it, I will tweet it and link it here – that has an argument that we can’t possibly be fully “woke” and trying to attain the title of “King Woke” or “Queen Woke” is a fools errand. Instead, we just need to acknowledge our biases – in the terms of the article, racism, but all biases that divide and silence – and do our best to set them aside as we live in this world.

So I issue a challenge. Read a poorly written article and judge is based on the merits of its argument, not the quality of its writing. Read an article arguing a position you disagree with – hate, even – and evaluate it honestly, not biased by your current preconception. If we do this, we can both widen our minds and also widen our arguments when we come up against something we find abhorrent, attacking it at its core and its logic instead simply in a way that can be described as “divisive” and “political.”

And instead of pretending you have no biases – and especially no internalized and/or casual racism – acknowledge it and work to set it aside.

Maybe we can start interacting with each other and loving each other fully if we try.

1For anyone my age and older, you should be insanely thankful that all the stupid thoughts you had as a teenager were not recorded as a permanent record for all to read forever – and to nail you to the wall about because you are a stupid teenager. Every election around/after 2032 should be pretty entertaining…

I awoke at 6:30. Yesterday my big toe hurt a little; today it was killing me and, come to find out, I am struggling to walk (and Dr. Google diagnosed me with gout, which is a bit deflating, not going to lie). The dog was very sluggish this morning, which caused me to worry until she finally decided it was time to wake up and want to go walk right that instant (and don’t forget the toe). She got a very short walk.

I got to the office and went to update the printer firmware that I’ve been meaning to update for months but kept forgetting to bring a USB cable with me. I went to the printer, and could not for the life of me remember what I set the administrator pin to. I spent 20-30 minutes kicking myself, trying to find how to factory reset the printer, and then finally remembering the incredibly simple and easy to remember pin that I set up.

THANKFULLY the firmware update went without a hitch and Google Cloud Print set up super easy.

That gets me to about 20 minutes ago. I don’t want to do anything. The office is cold – I really thought we were done with needing the heat last week – and my toe is still killing. I’m out of filtered water and the tap water is questionable most days. I think I slept well – Nora was complaining about storms and I’ll tell you, I have no recollection of a storm last night – and I have caffeine in my system, but I feel exhausted and all I want to do is curl back up in bed and try again tomorrow.

I have work to do. I hadn’t even considered Sunday in a concrete way until right before I typed this sentence. Computer games and distractions are calling my name, and it would be so easy to succumb to that temptation and get nothing done today.

I was ready to walk out the door and go to lunch WAY early when something just kind of starting gnawing at me:

Do something.

Sometimes we get to the point where there is too much to do and we just don’t know which task to tackle first. Sometimes there is a LOT of things that are outside of your hands and you are just twiddling your thumbs, waiting for it to others to take action so you know where you stand. Sometimes you just can’t focus and the office you actually kinda like becomes oppressive and draining.

Sometimes you just want to curl up and give up for no particular reason.

Do something. Do anything.

That’s part of why this blog is a thing for me. It’s something real, tangible, helpful to do. Is it the work I have to accomplish today? No, no it is not. Is it going to impress some church looking at my PIF? Very unlikely.

Is it something that I did, that I accomplished, that I can say to myself that I was capable of working on? Absolutely, and I can already feel my motivation coming back and getting my mind ready to do the work after lunch.

I don’t know, maybe I’ll post it and take it down tomorrow, but for me, those two words kind of got me out of the rut and back onto the path of accomplishing actual work today.

This should be a tweet, but I couldn’t make it a pithy little quip. Just…if you don’t care about my inane intolerance of just annoyingly edgy and confident media…like…just…go do something else instead of reading this. I’m just…tired…

But really, I listened to Benjamin Walker’s Theory of Everything today, most notably the episode on the future, and I just don’t have words to explain how much I exhaustedly hated it. Like, it epitomized everything I hate with our culture right now that doesn’t revolve around politics.

This is what I got out of it: technology is making us stupid, and Benjamin Walker knew everything bad that would happen with technology now in 2006, and only people as smart as him knew it.

Oh, and social media is making us dumber. As is technology.

He’s 4 years older than I am. We are in that weird middle stage where we are the elder millennials, me more solidly in Generation Y than him, but still this isn’t a generational divide. He just arrogantly doesn’t like social media and technology for the sake of not liking it.

What he epitomizes, for me, is the ultimately popular counter-culture, the hipster culture, the “I’m somehow better and smarter than everyone else because I’m not a sheep that just adopts technology and uses social media and you should worship at my superior feet” mentality that makes me want to punch things.

And it does because the reality is that this mindset of edginess and counter-culture being morally superior is so grating on my nerves because I have the mentality that I don’t care what culture does, I do what I find to be the correct course of action. If culture agrees, great; if it disagrees, whatever.

I spent a lot of energy as a preteen trying to fit in, and a lot of energy as a teen and young adult screaming that I didn’t fit in and that made me better. And then I grew up. I found my confidence and humility that allowed me to enjoy the world instead of looking for what I should hate.

I will pull an example from music. I have a weird taste for Ingrid Michelson, Sara Bareilles, and Brandi Carlile…and Tech N9ne and Bad Religion occasionally. I should hate them according to…well, really every measure of culture that I fit into. And I also love great, non-mainstream (but still accessible) bands like The Tedeschi Trucks Band and JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound and PJ Harvey and Gary Clark, JR., but I still like these really mainstream (or popular punk) artists, as well.

Why is being counter-cultural moral? Can someone actually answer that? Why is being contrarian a moral position? Why do you get to look down your nose at people when you refuse to consume popular culture and you rebel against technology?

Christians, too, have this awful ideal. Whenever a moral direction is changing within the church, the accusation is that the church is following culture, implying that all surrounding culture is absolutely wrong, and that aligned changes mean that the church is following culture, not that it is a parallel and concurrent, but separate, change.

Why is resisting change and being contrarian and counter-cultural seen as automatically moral? Can someone actually answer that for me so this subset of our culture…odd word choice…can not grate on my nerves quite so much?

Just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside for some reason, and I don’t even like Ed Hochuli (zebras = evil, just ask any NFL fan). Anyway, I want to point your attention to this image:

I’ve thought about this for much of this election cycle. There has been a lot of talk about how two candidates in particular are not part of a large machine, blindingly condemning all the other candidates awful because they are part of the machine.

Maybe I should be railing against that, too, but I see a more egregious problem. And also, just because somethings is a logical fallacy doesn’t not mean the evidence won’t prove it. Thoughts for another day.

The problem I see is another fallacy that isn’t “officially” a logical fallacy but seems to happen quite regularly right now: the belief that someone is innocent simply because they are dissociated with the problem group.

“Donald Trump is not a politician, so obviously he isn’t the problem.” “Bernie Sanders is an outspoken independent and truly radical so he’s the only good option.” Do you see how they both are lifted up by the dissociation from mainline politics? Has nothing to do with their politics, just that they aren’t obedient cogs in the political machine.

Dissociation is not proof of innocence. I’m not saying anything about the guilt or innocence of anyone, just that this is not proof of anything.

The frustrating thing with logical fallacies is that they preclude something from being used as proof but don’t actually prove something untrue. It may be quite true that Donald Trump is going to do something good because he isn’t beholden to anyone, or that Bernie Sanders radicalism is the cure to all the county’s ills*. Just because the conclusion is come to through a logical fallacy doesn’t make the conclusion untrue.

Am I the only one that sees the problems rising here? Do you see how broken our political system is that outsiders are lifted up as messiahs? I realize Christ was an outsider, and a radical, but his actions were chosen by being correct, not by what would make him radical or different.

That’s my problem. I took me writing this whole thing to figure this out. We are voting for people because they are outsiders or radicals and judging them solely based on that. Or also because they are doing things that we want, not what would actually be best for the country and all the people.

Just…stop choosing politicians like a 19-year-old rebel and start choosing them like hiring managers and call committees. Who is actually qualified to do the job? Who will seek to serve the will of the people and the needs of the people? Who will actually serve the country and the world instead of serving themselves? And who will do that in a way that is effective?

I don’t see an answer yet, and maybe that’s just me.

Breathe in, breathe out, lunch time!

– Robby

* Please, in the name of all that is good and holy, do not read this to say I actually believe either of these things – I don’t – but an example of how logical fallacies actually work in terms of proof. The answer: they literally prove nothing without additional work. No accusing me of being a Trump/Sanders 2016 ticket support….

I read an article today about race and “white evangelicals need(ing) to repent” for racism, and I got all hot under the collar and ready to fight and ready to write another long tirade about being tired of trying to be moderate just to be told I’m evil by everyone and tired of the co-opting of that word “evangelical” to mean “Crazy, Mean, Hateful Conservative” and tired of articles that proclaim the end of divisiveness actually creating more and tired of fighting and hating each other and tired of not being able to disagree with someone’s methods because somehow disagreeing with their methods, and not their message, is racist and then I decided I’m tired of all of it and I wasn’t participating this time.

But I needed to write because when I’m mad, that’s about the only thing that will calm me down that is even remotely productive. So I decided today was my day to do a post I’ve been thinking about for a long time:

Robby’s Rules of the Internet

I’ve thought about this post for a while – usually any time I see something stupid on the internet, or people following something blindly, or a general lack of skepticism for things that you agree with – and today is the day I finally flesh it out.

Am I qualified to write this post? Absolutely. I’ve been internet savvy for longer than most, thought about the implications of social media for a while, actually researched how social media has affected our social interactions, and spent more time thinking about this than most because I could.

(If anyone wants to challenge my qualifications to write this article, I welcome that; but you must also point out why I’m wrong and present a reason why you – or someone else – is more qualified.)

Okay, now that I’ve provided my pedestal of judgement to stand upon, let us begin.

Rule 1: RUN EVERYTHING YOU POST ON SOCIAL MEDIA THROUGH GOOGLE

This particular rule bit me in the butt a couple of years ago, which is why it’s number one. If you are going to post something, MAKE SURE IT’S TRUE AND ATTRIBUTED CORRECTLY (which is how I got bit)! If someone says that MLK Jr. said something, make sure it’s all his and not partially an American school teacher working in Japan. If you post an infographic or a political meme, make sure the facts are true (and not a horribly politicized interpretation of those facts). If you post something scientific, make sure you aren’t just posting horrible clickbait.

Run everything through Google. Just do it.

Rule 2: Anything That Attempts to Negate the Equality of the Internet is Evil

Period. The internet is amazing because it is a great equalizer. All information is equal, all people are equal, all data is equal.

This is a Free Speech Issue (just ask China), this is a Free Commerce Issue, this is a Human Rights Issue (just ask Saudi Arabia), this is a Freedom of Information Issue (ask any country that has filtered internet).

The reason that this is so important is that no one person, no one government, no corporation, no one gets to decide what is important, was is unimportant, and what is dangerous. The internet allows all voices to shout, allows people to investigate and report on their governments and powers and corporations, and be heard despite the best efforts of those in power.

Anyone who wants to censor the internet or create a hierarchy of data has their best interest at heart at the detriment of the best interest of anyone else.

Rule 3:Don’t Feed the Trolls

Do you know what Internet Trolls feed upon? People getting pissed off. They feed on creating artificial controversy and getting people riled up against them and judging them.

Do you know that starves a troll? Getting no response at all. No getting angry, no getting angry at those who got angry, no even saying they are stupid publicly. Give them nothing, and they starve.

This one came out of the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen – the stupid Starbucks cup thing that meant nothing. A Christian internet troll got all indigent because Starbucks didn’t put…Santa Claus, a fun character that has become a consumer method of child control, and Christmas Trees, which are not at all Christian but an intentionally co-opted pagan tradition to convert pagans at the time. I like both, I rather enjoy Christmas trees and figure parents can decide on Santa, but to say that it’s a war on Christmas from a Christian standpoint and using things like that might be the best trolling thing ever…

Rule 4: People Don’t Know You’re an Idiot on the Internet

…noting, importantly, that someone can be a troll even if they truly believe what they are saying.

The internet does not have the journalistic integrity checks that traditional media has. In some ways this is absolutely the point – the internet is the great equalizer and every voice has the same power – but it pushes that responsibility to check the integrity of the author and the work to the reader. Which is fine because we are at least running everything though Google, and should be doing more research if its important and the conclusions aren’t readily clear.

Unless you don’t do that, which most people don’t. You can still find regularly updated “9-11 Truth” websites and people buying those conspiracies. You can find out any fact about racial tensions in the country – any fact you want, just think it up and someone has said it somewhere about it.

In real life, we know the people who are idiots. They are the ones who bait you into debates and then shut down and tell you are wrong when you approach their position with skepticism. They are the ones that say things that are clearly untrue like they are gospel. They do things that let you know they are stupid and their thoughts met with great caution.

(Mind you, we all qualify as this at times. I got into an hour-long fight about the odds of winning the lottery that I was wrong about because simple math evaded me.)

The internet washes away our idiocy away and presents an image that we know what we are talking about. Again, an equalizer – no one knows that the only descriptions I have of Scotch are “Hairspray” and “Piss” despite actually being able to describe bourbon and beer with some level of skill – but as susceptible to abuse, both intentional and accidental.

If you assume everything you read is written by an idiot unless otherwise proven, and you approach internet journalism with healthy skepticism, you will be much better off.

Rule 4a: …But Smart People Assume You Are

So address the smart people. Resolve their skepticism if you can, address it if you can’t but still feel you are correct, and change when you are wrong. And continue to be that questioning smart person; it makes you smarter and a better person.

Rule 5: Privacy is Not a Political Issue

Stop making it one. If this was my major issue, I would protest outside of every event of every candidate because not a one of them has my interest – or your interest – at heart. Their own power and control of the populace, absolutely, but not my actual interest.

And the multitude of times my privacy has been violated by the government has done nothing to protect me. Stop telling me intercepting my private texts between my wife and me is making me safe because it isn’t. If you are going to do something that can – and should – be interpreted as malicious for my benefit, you better be proving your benevolence and allowing people to decide.

I am not doing anything wrong, I have no plans to do anything wrong, I should be able to live my life as privately as I desire in terms of the government. You don’t need to know what items are on our grocery list, what we are fighting about, or when we make up.

So now that we see that privacy is absolute, you can see that privacy is a “Government vs. the People” issue, not a “Democrats vs. Republicans” issue because both sides contain people who are complicit and who are malicious on this issue, and not really any who are benign or benevolent
—
These are the major rules. There are others, but these cover 90% of your interactions on the internet. Just don’t be a pirate if you don’t know that you are doing, don’t install free software you don’t know the source of, and keep your stuff up-to-date and that could cover 98% of the rest.

But maybe I’ll so some more rules when I’m angry again and just need to write.

I posted a great conversation between Pete Holmes and Richard Rohr on Twitter the other day (HERE) and in part of it, Pete talks about his faith room, deconstructing it, and then reconstructing it. It really is a great illustration, and I have spent a stupid amount of time thinking about it since I first listened to it.

As I was showering (the best incubator for creative thought) and thinking about what I wanted to write this week, I got to thinking about the three stages of faith that they talk about in that podcast – construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction – and their discussion of getting stuck in one of the early stages. I especially thought of getting stuck in the deconstruction phase.

A lot of people, out of anger or frustration or whatever emotion they are feeling that causes them to deconstruct, just stay in that second phase. They just want to burn it down, burn their faith down and dance in the smoldering ashes of what was before. Someone gave them, or they created, something that became matches and gasoline to their faith, and they combined the two in the middle of their faith room and burned the mother to the ground.

And that’s fine. Sometimes you have to just burn it to the ground. Sometimes there is nothing good or healthy – especially for you – in your faith room and deconstructing it peacefully won’t work. Like some abandoned houses or barns, the best option is gasoline and matches.

There are two outcomes to this. One is the healthy one; the violent catharsis did it’s job and you are able to put out the flames and rebuild. Maybe your faith room is just a grass patch without a belief structure, or maybe you rebuild with something completely different but still a faith room. That is fine, as long as you don’t just stay in that burning stage.

The other outcome is that you really liked when you burnt down your faith room; you really liked the violence of the fire destroying your beliefs. It felt good, and you thought it was the most moral thing you could do. So you collect your matches and gasoline and force them upon other people, trying to watch the whole house of all belief rooms burn to the ground. You really push them on those whose houses have the same furniture and decorations that you have, trying desperately to make them burn it down because you needed to burn yours down and no one else should have that faith.

Some people will take your matches and gasoline and burn their faith rooms down because they were searching for matches and gasoline, but you can’t make anyone do that. You can’t burn the faith rooms down of anyone, no matter how much you want to. Even if their room causes you pain, even if you can’t stand the sight of what they have put in their faith room, you can’t burn it down no matter how much you want to.

I kind of want to talk about my deconstruction and (hopeful) reconstruction to illustrate this. I was raised Christian – Presbyterian in fact – and I haven’t veered from it much.

Actually, that’s not true. I had a time where I just started tossing everything organized out. Everything. I didn’t have violent or fast deconstruction, I didn’t move everything out in a day; I just started taking things out that I didn’t think made sense. I really found myself with an old but wonderful couch – the Apostles’ Creed – and a mirror.

But I started rebuilding from there. I believed that there is a God, that Christ was real, and that a Holy Spirit works within me. Everything else was fair game.

It is odd, but I find that the things that have made their way back into my faith room aren’t all that different than the thing that were in here before, just better or older or more intentional and personal. The couch of depravity of humanity was once a cheap, Walmart pleather couch that wouldn’t last; I replaced it with black heirloom couch that was melancholy but brought me comfort, and then replaced that one with a brightly colored custom couch that is comfortable and great for sitting and talking and be with anyone and being truly comfortable. The computer of loving God with all of my heart, soul, strength, and mind was replaced by a desk, bookshelf, weight bench, heater, and better computer of loving God with all of my heart, soul, strength, and mind. The end table of loving God was from the Dollar Store but know is built by my hands, imperfect and flawed but strong and personal.

The thing I think a lot of people who want to watch the faith rooms of everyone burn miss is that I have the matches and gasoline in my room, too. Some of the matches sit in a cupboard, some are used to light candles and start controlled fires. Some of the gasoline became kerosene for a lamp, some is gasoline that I left outside while I contemplate what to do with it, some of it had no weight and became water as it entered my room. But it’s all there; I just didn’t use it to burn everything down.

The thing about the reconstruction phase is it’s kind of like remodeling a house; nothing is ever permanent again. I’m reminded of my friend Nathan remodeling his kitchen; he took out ten layers of flouring, with wood over and under multiple layers, and wood again under everything (not exaggerating). The process of changing and rebuilding is never done, and is never permanent. If I were to put a timeline on it, my deconstruction started in high school and got stronger in the beginning of college, and my reconstruction started at the end of college, but then I started seminary and a bunch of cleaning happened and a bunch of stuff got replaced with stronger and better stuff, some made by me, a lot made by people who make faith furniture that I customized after the fact. And I burned the hutch of condemning individual sins and judging people whose sins are different than mine in a glorious fashion with fireworks and dynamite that brought the spectators (liberals) and police (conservatives) alike, all whom were disappointed.

Only I can burn my faith room to the ground. You are welcome to give me the matches and gasoline – much of which I already have – but only I can strike the match. Kind of like only you could strike the match of your faith room. And only I can put things in my faith room, build the walls, and decorate the room. No matter how much you want me to have your couch or painting or rug, I alone can choose what comes in and what stays out.

Everyone would be happier if we stopped trying to control and build the faith rooms of others. All we can do is give them access to elements and love them; they have to do the rest, and because the only way faith and love work is if people are free to choose. Love can certainly help move things in if requested, it can certainly let up the gasoline puddles and open the gas valves, but it can’t strike the match or force things in.

Each faith room in individual and personal and can’t be made by anyone else. So give access to furniture and matches and gasoline and water out of love, and stop forcing them on people.

I hope that all made sense. Now to do what I actually need to do today. This isn’t a sermon, I don’t think.

Peace,
– Robby

P.S.: If you like this and want to comment, do so below. I love Facebook likes and comments, but they don’t really help in terms of a blog. So if you want to comment on Facebook, duplicate it here, pretty please. And if you like, share all over the place. I can only share so many ways before I’m a bother or look like spam.

One day I got distracted by Illustrator. I had this concept in my head for about a week and I wanted to realize it in a real way.

It started with this first one:

I liked it, but I guess I decided he was a bit exclusive. Not only boys have broken hearts. Thus:And I was pleased. But then I realized, if they have identical hearts, and their both broken, maybe they can put them together and be happy with each other. Because I’m sappy and all:

Yeah, this blog is literally anything from day to day. Thus, I have an “Irrelevancies” category, but this is relevant to nothing. But I like it!